Don't Keep Your Code Repos in iCloud

If you do development on macOS and keep your files in an iCloud-synced folder, move your code repos out — now.

I’ve always cloned my GitHub repos into ~/Documents, which iCloud syncs by default. Recently, while working on the Mage project, I ran into a maddening bug: Spotlight and Finder would completely freeze whenever I was about to modify files on my desktop.

It took me days to track down the root cause. Spotlight was repeatedly re-indexing the massive number of small files in my repo — .git objects, node_modules, build artifacts, you name it — across every version iCloud decided to keep. The real nightmare was that there was almost nothing I could do about it. Deleting the local copies didn’t help: iCloud would just pull them back from the cloud and restore them on my machine.

In the end, the only way out was to erase my entire computer and set it up from scratch. That cost me about 4 hours of hands-on work plus an overnight sync to get everything back. Once restored, I downloaded every repo from iCloud and immediately moved them out of the synced directory.

My recommendation: create a ~/dev folder — sitting at the same level as Desktop and Documents under your home directory — and keep all your code projects there. It stays out of iCloud’s reach, and Spotlight won’t lose its mind over your .git folders.

Save yourself the pain.